11-15-2011, 08:18 AM

I need to return a S.M.A.R.T. status "failing" hard drive to manufacturer in exchange for warranty replacement I now have. The drive is readable and I was able to transfer all info to new drive. Problem is, disk utility will not erase the info from the failing drive either from within the system or from without.

Any thoughts?

Many Thanks,
jnart

11-15-2011, 08:22 AM

Try the partition tab.

11-15-2011, 03:06 PM

I did. The drive had two partitions. it erased one but won't let me access the other.

11-15-2011, 03:48 PM

Can you delete both partitions, create a single partition and format that?

11-15-2011, 04:52 PM

Found an unlikely solution. Was talking with a friend who said use a big magnet to scramble the files. I had one available and did so. I put the drive back in and found the files were still intact. Took it out, then rethought and put it back in. Used disk utility and this time it read the previously unavailable partition. It is at present going through a zero erase (about 2 hrs). I don't know why it works now, but I'll take it.

11-18-2011, 01:44 PM

Originally Posted by jnart

Found an unlikely solution. Was talking with a friend who said use a big magnet to scramble the files. I had one available and did so. I put the drive back in and found the files were still intact. Took it out, then rethought and put it back in. Used disk utility and this time it read the previously unavailable partition. It is at present going through a zero erase (about 2 hrs). I don't know why it works now, but I'll take it.

for the magnet to have worked it would have had to be a very big electro magnet. even the best rare earth magnets won't do it... hdd's have heavy magnetic shielding on them....

if the 0 out doesn't work try booting off your disk and remove your os from the equation... use the disk utility there to do a format... also if you have access to the disk just delete the files and fill the drive with junk to make it unrecoverable